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The only thing better would be to be able to actually pan/zoom the 3D model. Dunno if you've ever looked into anything like this, but I'd suggest that you consider putting your work out as a "3D PDF" file.

I hadn't seen any of the 3D PDF stuff before.

Sadly, I'm still using mainly 20th century technology for all this (the perspective image was a shot of my old Constellation as a wireframe with the more complex decks distorted to match, and others drawn in by hand), but I started teaching myself Blender a couple weeks ago. I just haven't been home enough to either work on this stuff in the computer (most of my notes are hand drawn and then redrawn for the sketch images I post here) or learn Blender.

But yeah, it sounds like I really need to learn more about this 3D PDF stuff as (from what you described) it should be able to take output from some of my math apps (like Mathematica or Geomview) and make that information available to others without them needing specialize (and expensive) software.

Shaw One other question I had for you, totally unrelated to the above. Does the placement of the "rust ring" on the dorsal side of the primary hull lend itself to being the doors that blow off to allow escape boats or life pods to quickly evacuate the ship?

Actually, no... it is just different paneling that weathered differently than the older paneling.

I don't believe that TOS had lifeboats or the like. We aren't talking about ships in the same way that a ship on the ocean could sink... these ship's don't sink (what would they sink into?). Every compartment is able to support itself in case of an emergency, so that covers keeping people safe. In the case of the warp engines blowing up (or the like), the primary hull would be the lifeboat.

The other thing is that these compartments (specially the ones on the outer edge) are completely replaceable. The windows on the outer edge of the primary hull changed and sky light types of windows were added... those changes only effected the outer most ring of the primary hull, so maybe those compartments were replaced. And in the process, the material used to replace the ship's outer skin in those areas weathered differently than the rest of the ship (leaving the rust ring we see later).

It also means that when looking at the Constellation in TOS, the damage wasn't all that bad (totally fixable). And the wider primary hull in TMP works if wider outer compartments were used when refitting the ship.

Having these compartments solves a ton of issues in TOS... and even in Phase II and TMP.

I see. I was thinking about the lifeboats/lifepods we see in the Mirror Universe episode of Enterprise and that are littered all over the decks of TNG era vessels.

Since the Constitution Class Enterprise was designed with smooth surfaces to allow for as much work as possible to be done in a shirtsleeves environment, I figured there had to be lifeboats/lifepods that were behind hatches with explosive charges for immediate abandonment of the ship in case the primary hull fails to separate in an emergency or it suffers a catastrophic failure or other damage that renders abandoning the primary hull necessary. For an example of where this might be useful (although in this particular case it probably would not work give the close proximity of the planet, but you will be able to get an understanding for what I mean), take a look at what happened when the crew abandoned the secondary hull in Generations (dare I speak its name!). The primary hull gets smacked by the shock wave of the secondary hull's explosion and suffers damage as a result. Had they been further from the planet, it is conceivable that the crew could have used the lifeboats/lifepods on the saucer section, even as temporary shelter until the primary hull was repaired.

Just a thought. This is your project, and a fine one at that.

Back on the designation of the petrol/gas station convenience store on board, in my earlier post I forgot to mention the possibility of naming it the Ship's PX. It might be a stretch, and those with more recent military experience may be able to explain it better than me (I do not know if you are active/retired military), but a store like this might meet the needs that replicators cannot (like Rand's perfume, etc.). If I have succeeded in adding even more confusion to the whole naming of a simple little convenience store that was never seen on screen, but was referenced, then my job here is done!

__________________
"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

"Question: How many Imagineers does it take to change a light bulb?
Imagineer's Answer: Does it have to have a light bulb?"

I tend to agree that there probably should be some redundant escape system in place in the event that a saucer separation is impossible. In the very least there sould be something in the secondary hull (like the pods in TMP) for the engineering crew to use to escape if they're cut off from the primary hull and the shuttlebay, or the saucer has already separated.

Now, since you used the Constellation as en example, what if a connie had sustained that sort of hull damage, main power & long range comms offline, life support failing
but they're in range of a M-Class planet? Sure they can separate and make it into orbit, but with that sort of hull damage, an atmospheric entry without shields would be disastrous. Escape pods could make the drop and with them everything the the crew needs to survive long enough to await rescue. As you say, the saucer has a surprising amount of floorspace, so there should be enough room to fit in say forty three, ten person escape pods, about 6x4x4m in size.

As for Rand's perfume, if they have the chemical technology to create and mass produce new an complex medicines, I don't think scented water would be much trouble. For anything more exotic and authentic, that what starbases & traders are for.

Shaw, something was bugging me about the floorplan of the Phaser Control room you're using. I pulled out the book Inside Star Trek, which has the same plan, and then I looked at Balance of Terror and, sure enough, the set plans don't jibe with the set as constucted...albeit the way you dropped it in, where the moved the door ended up it would actually meet your corridor.

I figured out the differences...not perfect, but it gets the idea across:

Thing is, if you try to make the sets as built accurate in your ship, the wall seen outside the door in the set would end up smack in the middle of the corridor you have roughed out.

Of course, to make matters worse, Spock runs down a curved corridor and then OUT along a radial one to get to the room...which wouldn't fit into that deck space at all.

Well, right now I've been using a combination of the help documentation and some tutorials put up by FourMadMen. And the thing that peeked my interest enough to start modeling again was getting some very cool plans of a ship from Thomas Sasser (I learn better when I have an inspirational project to apply what I'm learning to).

Right now I'm using Blender on my PowerMac G4, but I got an SGI Indigo 2 IMPACT a little over a year ago and have been looking for something that I could do on that system to learn more about it. My SGI Indy's hardware is geared towards video editing tasks, but the processor is too slow for any 3D work beyond the simple math stuff I do. So while I do have Blender on my Indy, the Indigo 2 is about four times as fast with a much better video card (and is compatible with newer versions of Blender).

But if you know of a good source for documentation... specially printed (or printable) documentation, that would be great!

Yeah, I tend to use projects to learn things I've always wanted to learn... and this one is no exception. I quickly realized that there is a ton of information which is best provided in a written form along with illustrations, so I'll most likely be using this project (the deck plans) to teach myself FrameMaker (which I'll be able to add to PageMaker, QuarkXPress, InDesign and Create as another page layout app I'll be proficient at). I find it interesting to see how different applications approach similar tasks.

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USS Jack Riley,

Well, I think that the idea of over redundancies can actually be more harm than good. Abandoning ship when your ship is your life is really a foolish act when you can go months without anyone noticing you are gone and decades before someone takes the time to send help.

Short of setting the ship to self-destruct, the primary hull is the life boat. The primary hull is made up of about 24 pressure compartments, the odds of all of them being violated is pretty remote. And anything that could come close to doing that would wipe out life boats even faster.

My feeling is that life boats on starship serve one purpose and only one purpose... adding surface clutter to starships.

The only ships that I feel can justify life boats are those really lacking in redundancy... those that are basically a single hull. But in the case of the original Enterprise, it is it's own life boat.

On a similar note, I think that the redesign of the secondary hull in TMP was ill conceived in that it effectively reduced it's ability to serve as an alternate life boat (though I have heard the argument that because it wasn't often used as such, Star Fleet felt that hollowing it out made better use of that space).

But then again, when all is said and done, I hope that you guys try it out another way. If I seem slavish to certain things while skirting past others, that is just because I'm putting forward my vision of things... which isn't to say that that is the right vision by any stretch. I would be very disappointed if my version of things is being argued against Joseph's version or Drexler's version (or even versions by April or aridas sofia) some years from now. I mainly want people to try to think of how they, themselves would do this rather than deciding that someone less was more correct than anyone before or after.

And going back over the images I've posted in this thread (which can all be found here), there should be a more than enough raw information on this subject for anyone to start playing around with ideas that might be different than my own. Most of the set plans I have are seen scaled relative to other set plans and the ship itself in these images, I'm still in the process of sketching out plans for seen sets that I want to include, but even without them you guys should really be able to start attacking this subject in your own ways.

To be perfectly clear (because I don't see a way of saying it without sounding harsh), when I say do it yourselves, remember that that really is the point of this project. If you guys like my ideas... great! And if you don't, that is fine too.

I had been hoping to see more derivative work by now, but I can understand people waiting for better (cleaned up) versions of all the set plans and the like.

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DS9Sega,

Actually that is very helpful... Thanks!

I've decided to avoid the corridor issue altogether. Basically, once they exit a room into a corridor, I assume that is where the useful information from the show ends. You basically have a semi-long section of curved corridor and a couple short examples of straight corridor, and that was pretty much it on the show. So the curvature of the corridor had to be the same no matter where it was used (including out side of engineering). So given that, I'm working from the assumption that a door leading to a corridor actually leads to whatever geometry of corridor that works for that area of the ship without a loss of generality in the overall plans themselves.

Almost appears as if the door Spock comes through is on the opposite side than in the set plan. Where it says "console" beside the word "forward" above the word "see" is where the door ended up being put for shooting.
He walks in, the engineering grill is on his right. The camera would be around where the word "dwg" is. The sitdown console is rotated 90 degrees, you're right about that.
If you follow the set plan, the grill would be on his left if he walked in the door that's shown - it's not accurate. I figure that when they got to shooting, it blocked better the way it ended up in the episode.

Almost appears as if the door Spock comes through is on the opposite side than in the set plan. Where it says "console" beside the word "forward" above the word "see" is where the door ended up being put for shooting.
He walks in, the engineering grill is on his right. The camera would be around where the word "dwg" is. The sitdown console is rotated 90 degrees, you're right about that.
If you follow the set plan, the grill would be on his left if he walked in the door that's shown - it's not accurate. I figure that when they got to shooting, it blocked better the way it ended up in the episode.

Not "almost"...that's exactly what they did. The door got swapped to the opposite corner, the second console got moved to the other end of the wall with the tanks, and the central console got rotated. Also, it looks like the room may not have ended up rectangular...look at the engle of that ceiling beam coming out near the door.

I should add that I don't think it's necessary that the phaser control room be located right behind the phaser banks...it could be directly above them on the larger deck. Adjacent doesn't necessarily mean horizontal!

__________________

* * *

"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
—Will Rogers

And in reality, this being your project, that is all that matters. Don't worry about being harsh with me. This is your project. I have no interest in taking over your thread. Unless there is money to be made, in which case it was all my idea!!!!!!

I just throw out ideas to see how they might fit in with other people's idea of how the Enterprise might look if it really existed.

As for putting together my own set of plans based on your work - when I get the time (pardon the stifled guffaw) I will do so. In the meantime, "She Who Must Be Obeyed" and my 2 kids take up what little spare time I have.

__________________
"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

"Question: How many Imagineers does it take to change a light bulb?
Imagineer's Answer: Does it have to have a light bulb?"

Shaw, I thought I'd let you know that I have had my home PC's desktop background set to your "wireframe with turbolift shaft silhouettes" illustration for several days. It's very cool. Keep up the good work!

I normally like to put together some notes before I dive into my final work on a project. In the case of this project, I've shared a lot of my sketch work with you guys already, so I'm building up a nicer version of the notebook I would have thrown together for myself anyways. Hopefully I'll have it done in the next few days (I only have about six pages of it done so far).

FalTorPan, I'm glad that you liked that image! I have put together a better version for the notebook (little higher resolution and cleaner).

So, the basic idea of the notebook is to print it out, mull it over, mark it up and write out additional thoughts right onto the pages. While computers can be great tools, when dealing with a bunch of info like this it is quite helpful (to me) to have it on paper so I can flip through it while considering things.

So, the basic idea of the notebook is to print it out, mull it over, mark it up and write out additional thoughts right onto the pages. While computers can be great tools, when dealing with a bunch of info like this it is quite helpful (to me) to have it on paper so I can flip through it while considering things.

I do this sort of thing all the time for my creative projects, the latest of which is creating my first major conlang.